Category: Articles
Wish I Was Here: Kickstarting Zach Braff
Years from now, it is entirely likely that the cinematic significance of Zach Braff’s second feature film, Wish I Was Here, will be based primarily on the manner in which it was funded. Unable to secure funding via traditional means, Braff launched a Kickstarter campaign and raised enough money in 48 hours to move ahead…
Akira Kurosawa: Debating the Way of the Samurai
The second of a two-part debate between CURNBLOG’s Simon Butler and Jonathan Eig on the films of Kurosawa. The question: Are Kurosawa’s Samurai films superior to his contemporary films? See Part One here. I’m no Miniver Cheevy. That is to say, I don’t wish I was born in another century when knights achieved feats of derring-do and…
Akira Kurosawa: Debating the Highs and Lows
The first of a two-part debate between CURNBLOG’s Simon Butler and Jonathan Eig on the films of Kurosawa. The question: Are Kurosawa’s Samurai films superior to his contemporary films? See Part Two here. Simon Butler and I are at it again. This time, we are debating the iconic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Which were greater, Kurosawa’s Samurai…
Building Time Machines: From La Jetée to 12 Monkeys
In 1962, a brilliant cinephile with a passion for temporal distortion completed construction of his masterpiece – a time machine. His name was Chris Marker, and the machine was La Jetée. This invention, built almost entirely out of black and white photographs taken with a Pentax Spotmatic and a brief piece of footage captured by…
Clint Eastwood and the Western: A Film Primer
There are few figures quite as representative of American ideals of masculinity as Clint Eastwood. Since starring in Sergio Leone’s genre-perforating Western classic, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Eastwood’s career has largely been about the representation – and later the deconstruction – of what it means to be a man. This was, initially, a trajectory set…